And yet more garden progress

Well, having whinged a fair bit recently about not making any progress in the garden, suddenly in the past couple of weeks we've made leaps and bounds.  Obviously there's been the weeding achievements of my last post, but the other day we called in the big guns (aka B's dad) to do some more major works.

Please avert your eyes from the unweeded garden bed on the right of this photo.  I'm getting there!

The front yard had this weird diamond-shaped raised garden bed right in the middle of the lawn which was a big waste of space and mainly infested with stinging nettles.  Naturally I do not have a before photo.  I'm nothing if not consistent in this area.

Anyway, it obviously had to go.

B started out removing the rock border which quickly turned out to require a sledgehammer and significant amounts of brute force.  The damn thing was cemented in!  No, actually, the damn thing was an old fish pond that had been filled in at some point.  Oh goody.

It was possibly the world's sturdiest and most permanent diamond-shaped fish pond.  No flimsy plastic or fibreglass here.  Tonnes of concrete had gone into this thing.

Luckily J's Poppa has all the skills and equipment needed to demolish and dispose of the thing.  I shudder to think what it would have cost to get rid of if we'd had to hire his services.

J is deeply obsessed with all manner of diggers, trucks, tractors and machinery so she was front and centre for the whole operation.

That's how it's done, people.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Instagram will have seen the ominous rain clouds that arrived a couple of days ago and their promises were not empty.  It poured.  I'm not sure how far the news travels from little old Taranaki, but you may or may not have seen that we had people paddle boarding down the main street.  The stairs at the main shopping centre became a water feature as the rain spilled down into the shops.

It was pretty wet out here too, which was ahem terrific timing after the excavation works in the front yard.

And that, my friends, is how you remove a fish pond from your front yard in order to create a duck pond instead.

The rain eventually gave way to some watery sunshine, and the cool temperatures in combination with the water everywhere created the most magical mist in the evening.  Yes I continue to be enchanted by this kind of thing.

It crept in across the paddocks and hung between the trees of the orchard.

It's so much easier to appreciate all this weather when inside is dry and warm with the fire roaring.

Lots of quiet indoor pursuits.  The adult members of the family don't mind a bit but the smalls tend to get a little restive with too much time inside.

Luckily today dawned like this:

Have a good week, all!

It's school holidays here which means the calendar is looking very clean and empty.  Hopefully the rain stays away or I might have to relent and allow some play-dough to darken my doorstep.  Let's all cross our fingers for sunshine...